3 ms·
> Wright’s opposition to denser housing in his San Jose neighborhood has made him bedfellows with one rather uncomfortable partner for the self-described libera
by RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
> Wright’s opposition to denser housing in his San Jose neighborhood has made him bedfellows with one rather uncomfortable partner for the self-described liberal: President Donald Trump, who has decried efforts led by Wiener and others to build “low income housing” in suburban communities.
“It’s an absolute nightmare for me to say anything that is so close to what Trump has been saying about the invasion of the suburbs,” Wright said. “There’s a very embarrassing and disturbing parallel.”
People are always very woke and liberal until it affects their privilege or their pocketbooks. Which is a huge problem. You get great responses when you take polls about whether racial equality and justice is important to people and that something should be done. But, if you try to do any actual, concrete policy, the polling rapidly drops.
- darawk 6y agoEveryone is pretty sure that "rich people" should pay for everything, and that "rich" is defined as anyone that has 10x more wealth than I do. Whether you're making 20k or making 200k, everyone thinks that real wealth is one order of magnitude away.
- isx726552 6y agoIt’s not all relative, there are levels of wealth which are beyond normal conception, even in absolute terms. There are people who clearly have more money than they could reasonably spend in a lifetime (billionaires in particular), and then there are people who have an expensive house but not much else to speak of.
- jeffbee 6y agoBoth of those classes of people are right. Wealth in America is now so concentrated that "the rich" can all fit on the same airplane. The political conversation has been corrupted by convincing ordinary people that they have a common interest with the rich. This has been so successful that my mother, with a net worth of about $50k, gets on the phone to tell me how angry she is about Joe Biden's inheritance tax, which doesn't cost anything on estates worth less than $5 million.
- raxxorrax 6y agoAs someone not from the US, this discussion sounds just strange. I don't think housing policy solves homelessness and there are completely different issues. I also don't think SF is the "entry" to tech. It does sound like people just want cheap housing. Understandable, but doesn't sound like a policy to reduce racism at all. Is this another drug experiment?